The mistake Oasis made with ‘Be Here Now’ was that in their haste to create one huge, big, fuck-off wall of sound, they forget to clue-in some tunes. So in this respect, ‘Forth’ is arguably Oasis’s finest moment to date. And I don’t draw the parallel lightly. Here we have two bands who’s terrifically eccentric claims of being the best band in the worlds were, for a short while at least, not the simply the result of having too many lagers at lunchtime. Terribly big sounds need terribly big egos to match and with terribly big sounds you need terribly big songs. And if you don’t have the songs to match you have the aural equivalent of a midget rattling around in a mansion (which perhaps explains why Oasis were standing on the shoulders of giants on their own forth album).
For a time both bands had it all: Liam had his monkey walk, Richard had his lope, Liam half-inched Patsy Kensit off Jim Kerr and Richard made light with the bird of Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce. They didn’t just have it all, they had what anybody else had too. Then came ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ – the band’s ‘Wonderwall’ moment – an anthem to quell even the fiercest scuffle on the terraces and to lift even the heaviest of hearts. And it had a video to match – one man pushing against a current of grossly indifferent bodies, in perfect sync with his environment, ignoring the protests of those around him and furrowing his own belligerent niche in a dull and torpid world. And just to show how much he was prepared to go against the grain, his mode-switching highness even walked on cracks in the pavement.
So what’s changed? Well some things, but not all. Ashcroft’s still an angry and intense young man. He’s still squabbling with his band mates. He still looks the same. There’s still shitloads of delay on his voice and he’s still married to the bird he half-inched off Jason Pierce. What has changed though is the sound. Reverting to the stroppy, ‘space rock’ sound of earlier albums like a ‘A Storm In Heaven’ and tracks like ‘Blue’, Captain Rock and his lardy mates have lopped off the Andrew Oldham orchestra, the libel suits and their preoccupation with pastoral England (with the exception of the opening William Blake quote, naturally). Whether it is a natural consequence of Brit Pop having moved into a more global economy, the purring provinciality of ‘Urban Hymns’ has made way for a more sweeping, universal direction. Nick McCabe’s elaborate fret-fiddling has slipped quietly into the foreground and Ashcroft’s disciplined craftsmanship takes on a more supportive role, his lyrical cut and thrust now an aching, muffled scream punctuated by whispers. The luscious orchestral sweeps have also done a bunk too, replaced by the collective experimentalism of its core musicians. The album’s widescreen, cosmic opener, ‘Sit and Wonder’ is a case in point, likewise, ‘Noise Epic’ which couldn’t describe the song any better even had it been called, ‘Music to Watch Raucous and Cantankerous Blues Heavy Bastards By’.
It’s not a complete departure by any means. The emphasis has changed more than the approach. ‘Judas’ sparkles with the same champagne twinkle of a super-nova and ‘Valium Skies’ is obviously the result of a man who has been stockpiling ballads with same quiet passion as an Israeli munitions officer. The structures are less definite, the boundaries less defined and the whole thing seeps into the consciousness with the serenity of the Holy Spirit. Only louder, obviously.
There’s a handful of duffers admittedly, but with your more regular Verve fare like, ‘I See Houses’ and ‘Rather Be’ taking up ground previously occupied by tracks like ‘Sonnet’ and that blazing lump of space-rock, ‘Love Is Noise’ ripping through your cosmos, ‘Forth’ is a bold and authoritative summation, and perhaps the band’s least patchy offering to date.
‘FORTH’ RELEASED 25.08.08